Team Big Brother
Team Big Brother was a team that competed between Series 3-8 and 10 of Robot Wars, as well as both series of Robot Wars Extreme and the one-off series Nickelodeon Robot Wars. The Team The team was originally captained by Joe Watts, who was only six years old when the team first competed in Series 3, and he was joined by his father Ian who drove the robots. In Series 3 they were joined by Wayland Twiston-Davies and from Extreme 1 onwards Joe's little sister Ellie joined the team. They were also joined by Ian's wife Cath and their other daughter Megan in the pits, the latter of whom made a small cameo during the televised show. In 2016, Joe and Ellie did not return to the team, and their younger brother Sam Watts joined the team, with Ian Watts taking over as captain. James Crawford and Jennie Barker, a respective current and former student of Watts at the University of BrightonPrivate correspondence with the Or Te Facebook page, also joined the team. Robots The team originally entered Series 3 with Big Brother, named after Joe Watts due to him being a big brother to his two little sisters. Between Series 4 and Series 7, the team entered Bigger Brother, which also competed in Robot Wars Extreme and Nickelodeon Robot Wars. In 2016, Bigger Brother's successor, Or Te (initially known as Bigger Brother 2), was entered into Series 8, although it was not selected to compete in Series 9. The team returned to Series 10 with a four-part clusterbot, The Swarm. The team enjoyed considerable success, reaching three series Semi-Finals and the Grand Final of Series 5, finishing runner-up to Razer in the latter. They also won the Minor Meltdown in Extreme Series 2, with Joe and Ellie Watts at the controls of Bigger Brother. However, their latest entry, Or Te, was eliminated in the first round of Series 8, and was not selected to compete in Series 9.http://slick.productions/2016/11/10/the-fall-sunny-dispositions-and-robot-wars/ Big briother S3 offical image.png|Big Brother (Series 3) Biggerbrother.jpg|Bigger Brother (Series 4) Bigger brother5.JPG|Bigger Brother (Series 5) BiggerBrother Series 6.jpg|Bigger Brother (Series 6-7) Orte.jpg|Or Te (Series 8) The Swarm.jpg|The Swarm (Series 10) Wins/Losses *Wins: 22 *Losses: 14 Series Record Outside Robot Wars Biggerbrother2.jpg|The original Bigger Brother at BattleBots with silver armour BigBroBattlebots.jpg|Bigger Brother as it appeared on Season 2.0 of Battlebots LittleSister.jpg|Bigger Brother as Little Sister at Battlebots Big bro.jpg|Bigger Brother as Big Bro at Techno-Games 2002. Big bro 2.jpg|Big Bro in the Sumo event at Techno-Games 2003. Big bro.jpg.jpg|Big Bro in the Football competition of 2003 JakePegTG.jpg|Jake The Peg at Techno Games 2002 Biggerbrother.gif|Bigger Brother after Robot Wars went off air BiggerBrother on BigBrother.png|Bigger Brother on Big Brother, in the arena with the Housemates RC cars In addition to Robot Wars, the team also entered various other televised robot combat competitions. They entered the second season of BattleBots with Bigger Brother, and the latter three with Little Sister, essentially the Series 5-6 incarnation of Bigger Brother painted yellow and decorated with flowers. They also entered Techno Games with a weaponless version of Bigger Brother called Big Bro in the Football (teaming up with British Bulldog, a weaponless version of Bulldog Breed and going by the team name Team BB), the Assault course in which it came 3rd overall both series, and the Sumo events (which it won one year and lost to Mr Nasty, who was going by the name of All Torque, the next year) and the Tug of War. The team also entered with Jake the Peg in the Penalty Kick in 2002 and 2003, drawing with The Four Horsemen's Cybernetic, putting them both in third place. Jake the Peg returned in 2003 and won gold. Team Captain Ian Watts also appeared on Scrapheap Challenge as a technical expert. Bigger Brother later made an appearance in the 2010 season of the reality TV series Big Brother alongside Titan, a humanoid robot used for advertisements. As part of a task, Titan had turned some of the housemates into "robots" by way of making them dress in cardboard robot costumes, and the other housemates were given a chance to beat Titan by beating him in robot combat in a specially-made arena in the House Garden, with a Pit and low arena walls. Here, Titan "drove" Bigger Brother whilst the housemates used modified remote controlled cars, and had to survive three minutes in order to win. Bigger Brother emerged victorious in the resulting battle, immobilising all of the opponents in varying ways- pitting three of them, turning one on its side, crushing one against the arena wall, and even flipping one out of the arena, much to the surprise of the housemates. Bigger Brother appears on Big Brother in 2010 Bigger Brother also fought in several Roaming Robots competitions, along with the team's newest Featherweight robot Emergancy. It also remains an active competitor at Robots Live! events along with Or Te and Bigger Brother, with all of these robots making their most recent appearances at the Burgess Hill event in April 2017. Ian Watts still owns Bigger Brother and occasionally uses it for Engineering demonstrations at the University of Brighton, where he works as a lecturer. Bigger Brother in 2012 Bulldog_team-1140x760.jpg|Bull Dog, Ian Watts' new robot for the ABC Reboot. bulldog_team.jpg|Ian Watts and John Frizell with Bull Dog Creepy Crawlies.jpg|Creepy Crawlies Team Creepy Crawlies.jpg|Team Creepy Crawlies Ian Watts also entered BattleBots 2015 with a robot named Bull Dog that greatly resembles M2 and is covered in fur (in the hopes that it would fight a opponent armed with a flamethrower and catch fire), however Bull Dog was put on the reserve list and did not get to compete. Watts and Frizell returned to BattleBots in 2016, on a team with various British students, and Ian's son Sam. They entered Creepy Crawlies, a five-piece clusterbot, with each robot wielding a set of horizontal crushers. Each robot was designed in homage to a different insect. Creepy Crawlies suffered a destructive loss at the hands of Son of Whyachi, despite surviving longer than Ultraviolent, the latter of which still received a place in the bracket as a reserve. Creepy Crawlies would later become the design inspiration for The Swarm. Continuing the theme of multibots used by Team Big Brother and Team Terror Turtle in Robot Wars and BattleBots, the united team entered a four-part clusterbot into the Chinese show King of Bots. The robot consists of an invertible wedge-shaped unit named Banger, and three identical invertible robots with horizontal bar spinners named Mash, Mince, and Chop. The team all dressed as chefs, to match their naming scheme of British foods. Trivia *Team Big Brother's machines only reached won a heat of the UK Championship in series in which Philippa Forrester was pit reporter. This contrasts with Thermidor 2 and X-Terminator, which during the show's original run only reached the Semi-Finals in series which Forrester was not reporting. *Team Big Brother is one of seven teams to reach the Semi-Finals with two different robots. *Team Big Brother's second entry, Bigger Brother, received an Honorable Mention in The Combat Robot Hall of Fame in 2003, with the team's young members being cited along with the robot's flipper and performances in Robot Wars/''BattleBots''.http://runamok.tech/hall_of_fame.html Honours References Category:Team Pages Category:Competitors in 5 Wars Category:Competitors in Techno Games Category:Teams that competed in BattleBots Category:Teams who reached the semi-finals with two different robots Category:Teams which competed in King of Bots